(tinkling music)…- The challenge was to describe the font Harrington…as a person, then sketch that personification.…I call Harrington a cautious,…dandy, fellow, prone to fussiness.…Born during the golden age,…he's proper, elegant, and proud,…enjoying the center of attention.…He tells stories with great flourish…and delights in captivating an audience.…Although some people thing he's pretentious,…he prefers to think of himself as charming.…

Here's my sketch of Sir Harrington.…So when I do a sketch of a character,…I start to think first about the facial expression.…I need to think about what the eyes are doing,…what the mouth is doing, and I try…to sketch the face from a couple of different angles.…I might go frontal, then side view, until…I really get a feel for that character.…For me, this sketch, with the eyebrows,…felt most like Harrington.…I like th exaggerated nose and the ears, and the slight…sort of properness of his collar.…

It's a little exaggerated, but that felt right to me.…Once I've started to think about the face,…

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Understanding how to arrange the elements of a composition is critical to a successful final piece. Like the skeleton of a creature, composition is the foundation on which everything else rests.

This course will help to clarify best practices for developing any artistic or illustrated composition. Shaping the elements; marrying concept to composition; engaging the editing eye; achieving balance, unity, directional movement, and perspective; and exploring point of view and focal points are all topics covered in these lessons. Author (and professional artist) Mary Jane Begin also explores the major and minor pitfalls of a weak composition and explains the six compositional rules that lead to the best end results! See the steps in action in the final chapter, where Mary Jane designs a concept for lynda.com.

Then share what you've learned with the lynda.com community. Take the three challenges Mary Jane issues in the course and post your results to Facebook and Twitter, using the hashtag #learnatlynda. We can't wait to see your illustrations!